Opinions in Beit Shemesh are sharply polarised between secularists and
ultra-Orthodox as voters prepare for an election that is being restaged
after allegations of fraud

The request for directions elicited a startling and telling response, even if said in jest.

"Upstairs, turn right. Take a grenade and throw it in there," the man said, pointing a reporter towards the campaign headquarters of Moshe Abutbul, the ultra-Orthodox mayor of Beit Shemesh, currently in the midst of a bitter re-election battle.

The call to incendiary action was not serious. But it illustrated the seething tensions in this city of 80,000 ahead of an electoral contest that has cast it into the international spotlight and exposes Israel's yawning religious-secular divide.

Beit Shemesh, situated in the Judaean hills west of Jerusalem, has been a frequent flashpoint for violent confrontations between hardliners in the ultra-Orthodox community and less religious elements over cultural issues such as women's modesty.

Graffiti calls Jewish women to dress in a modest way in Beit Shemesh (Getty Images)

Now it is under scrutiny as never before, thanks to question marks over the popular legitimacy of the mayor.

Mr Abutbul, 49, who has led Beit Shemesh's municipality since 2008, is facing a rerun election on March 11 after Israel's supreme court ruled that his victory in an earlier poll was aided by systematic and "comprehensive" fraud.

He will be up against a secular challenger, Eli Cohen, whom he beat by 956 votes in last October's original poll.

The result's validity was thrown into doubt after police raided two houses in a Haredi [ultra-Orthodox] neighbourhood on polling day and discovered 200 identity cards which had apparently been collected to enable the mayor's supporters to vote multiple times under false names.

Officers also found disguises, including several pairs of glasses, hats, wigs and head-covering worn by ultra-Orthodox Jewish women.

In a slapstick chain of events, one suspect escaped the raiding party by jumping from a window. A car chase reportedly ensued through the suburban streets.

Mr Abutbul's victory triggered mass demonstrations, with around 2,000 people gathering outside the city hall to demand a rerun.

A subsequent police investigation uncovered evidence of wider irregularities – including votes apparently cast by dead people. Legitimate would-be voters turned up at polling stations to be told they had already cast their ballots.

Mr Abubtul continues to dismiss the charges, which he blames on anti-Haredi bias in the media and judiciary.

"I'm disappointed by the supreme court decision," he told The Daily Telegraph. "They should have checked deeper into things. I believe they gave my opponent a free chance to win the election again. I'm angry about that and I feel that I was mistreated."

Sipping tea outside Cup O' Joe's coffee shop in Beit Shemesh's main square, Mr Cohen – a former senior official with the Jewish Agency who is now deputy director of Mekorot, Israel's water company – took a different view.

"I went to court to win respect for democracy, the law and for the citizens of Beit Shemesh," he said, pausing to swap pleasantries with well-wishers. "We are against those people, the politicians, who committed the fraud and negatively marked our community. But we are in favour of the two communities [ultra-Orthodox and secular] living together. We can live together."

Electoral candidate Eli Cohen

Yet there is little sign of the two groups living together harmoniously in Beit Shemesh, where ultra-Orthodox now comprise around 42 per cent of the population after an influx that began in the 1990s.

Mr Abutbul's backers compare life under him to heaven. "I believe, until the election came along, that Beit Shemesh was the greatest place on earth," said Dr Efraim Rosenbaum, a paediatrician who has acted as a liaison between the mayor and the English-speaking ultra-Orthodox.

His opponents, by contrast, accuse him of spearheading a religious takeover that threatens to drive secularists out.

"It may be paradise for them but for us it's very, very sad," said Eli Philipp, 46, who accused the mayor of failing to tackle radicals who have physically and verbally attacked women and even school girls because of how they are dressed. "They are a society within a society and many of them are anarchic law breakers with no respect for the state of Israel."

Mrs Philipp, 46, a lawyer, has taken legal action against ultra-Orthodox-inspired signs placed throughout the city that she says discriminate against women.

Examples abound in Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, a Haredi neighbourhood, where proclamations in Hebrew urge women to "dress modestly, with long skirts and no trousers". Local men wear black hats, long coats, with sidelocks and beards characteristic of the Haredim.

Secularists complain they have witnessed wholesale discrimination under Mr Abutbul's administration, with a rapid expansion of religious neighbourhoods coming at the expense of other facilities.

"There's no cultural life, absolutely nothing," said Mr Cohen. "How can you explain that we don't have a swimming pool? We don't have a theatre, we don't have a cinema. We don't have a public football pitch."

That cuts little ice with Mr Abutbul's supporters in the affluent, religious Ramat Beit Shemesh Alef neighbourhood. "We don't have a space programme either. I am not looking to go to a Broadway play," retorted Nachum Kligman, an American-born ultra-Orthodox owner of a clothing business.

Mr Abutbul, meanwhile, boasts of building shopping malls and new roads while insisting he has steered the radical Haredim away from violence through "soothing" dialogue. "If Eli Cohen is elected, tension in the city will rise," he warned. "Cohen's campaign is very aggressive and he has written that he will fight against the radicals. [But] If you don't use the language of dialogue it can lead in the end to more violence."

Recalling how she was attacked with a rock while cycling through an ultra-Orthodox area, Mrs Philipp painted the choice in equally stark – but opposing – terms. "They are trying to drive us, no doubt about it," she said. "They've said more than once that they want this to be a Haredi city and we are not Haredim. Eli Cohen's campaign makes room for everybody, but the Haredim are not making room for us."